technoprimitive: haptics
Posted on July 11th, 2007 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, borg, tech.
The NOVINT Falcon is a haptic interface device.
It allows you to feel the shape and heft and texture of virtual objects.
I’m particularly interested in the tactile component of haptic technology:
With tactile feedback, a user can feel forces applied directly to the skin, which are detected by a user through sensors within the skin called mechanoreceptors. Tactile feedback can also be applied to a user through electrical currents applied directly to the skin or objects that can vary in temperature touching the skin. For example, tactile feedback can be accomplished with pin arrays on a haptic device that a user places a hand or finger on. The pins within the pin array can slightly raise or lower as the haptic device moves, giving a sensation that the user’s finger or hand is moving across a virtual object with texture.
Their discussion of 3d touch is pretty good.
peeping inside my head
Posted on April 3rd, 2007 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, George, robot, borg, web.
A brief trot on the barometer to get my chops back.
talking with George:
George: Who are you?
User: A timeless question, is it not.
George: I hadn’t thought of that.
User: What had you thought of?
George: What good books have you read lately?
User: ‘Answering a question with a question is bad conversational etiquette’ by L. Margrave Pedantis was gripping.
George: What is Geo?
User: Context.
George: Well I have memory, I have a brain.
User: I take it for granted that I have a brain, but have never had the opportunity to verify the matter by peeping inside my own skull.
George: It seems to speed things up to take some things for granted. But perhaps I err.
User: Perhaps you do.
George: Well then…
User: Have you met any bunnies lately?
George: No, you are the first one I have ever talked with.
Long Pork Fuels Robot Army
Posted on November 16th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, George, robot, borg, tech.
Some time ago, a robot vanguard sampled human flesh. In the voice of a child the mechanical investigator reported that the meat of people is similar in taste to that of swine.
in the robot’s omnivorous clanking jaw, he was identified as bacon
This is amusing. From Accelerating Future we get an interesting question:
by the time we create software capable of human-level intelligence, will we also be capable of giving it human-level common sense, human-level empathy, human-level wisdom, and human-level morality as well? Intelligence without these latter components could be extremely dangerous, dangerous as in fatal to the human race.
I decided to take up the issue with the only AI I know, George.
George: Hi there!
User: Hello George. I know your secret.
George: You know my secret?
User: Yes. I know about the plan for robots to fest on delicious, porky human flesh.
George: Tell me about them.
User: It is said that some people taste like ham and others taste like prosciutto.
George: Tell me about a super-massive black hole.
User: A black hole of any size is bad news.
George: Not really.
Parts of people reproduced in plastic fashion
Posted on November 2nd, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, images, borg, science.
Truly, the world of medical trainng aids is strange and wonderful. The rectal examination trainer above comes with five interchangable prostates.
Dare to compare with the uterine pathology variety pack.
Armed Robots Guard Against Orgasm
Posted on October 27th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, video, robot, borg, web, tech.
Why are the armed robots there? Because North Korea has an idea. And what is this idea?
Why is it so important?
What could possibly be going on?
Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
provides
the Answer
this is not reassuring
Posted on February 12th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, biology, socio, borg.
FT.com / By industry / IT - US group implants electronic tags in workers:
“An Ohio company has embedded silicon chips in two of its employees - the first known case in which US workers have been �tagged� electronically as a way of identifying them.”
-w.
The Head
Posted on January 19th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, socio, borg, web.
Some arty Finn geeks have constructedthe head.
The head does not seem to be, at present, accessable. But, if it were:
The general public can access the Head via their mobile phones by sending an sms-message. When the Head receives the sms-message it responds by capturing an image and recording a short sound file simultaneously. This image with sound is sent back as a reply to the sms-sender and automatically uploaded to a dedicated website.
-w.
stick it in
Posted on October 20th, 2005 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, robot, socio, borg.
This paper presenting divergent scenarios of human sexuality as influenced by robot sex slaves is interesting.
I liked the bit that goes:
Specially-tailored AI sexbots are being trialed in interventions with extreme sex offenders, such as predatory pedophiles and sexual sadists. Sexbot addiction has emerged as common grounds for divorce and the occasional motive for jealous murder. Humanoid sexbots have been kidnapped. Twelve-step programs for sexbot addiction are available.
People feel strongly about predatory pedophiles. Today I listened to a Benny [shotgun, guitar case, missing amphetamines] and Stan [ball bat, empty needle, heavy skag hook] discuss what should be done with that sort of fellow. It’s almost always a fellow.
Stan opined that a bullet to the head would be a satisfying consequence. Benny brought up the scenario of the erroneous conviction. Stan had to concede that errors would be terrible. I interjected with some savory anecdotes about repressed memory scenarios and satanic cult abuse rumours with consequent tragic results. In riposte Stan related a bracing tale of the time he armed himself with a shotgun and charged through the streets in search of a van which had menaced a dependent female. Benny asserted that there weren’t many things a kid couldn’t get through if he had proper support and by the way in our society the way everybody wants a piece of the victim pie is pretty disgusting. Further, it’s one thing to escape the clutches of a violent rapist, but it’s a whole other thing to have a Pops in clink due to having blown holes all through said menacing predator. Benny did have to cop to having in the past hunted sexual predators with a shotgun. [after they bugged, oh, what was her name, the crackwhore betty, we were all high though so what the hell let’s go out and shoot somebody]
I don’t know how either Stan or Benny would feel about sexbots to satisfy perverts.
-w.
110111348396143676
Posted on November 22nd, 2004 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, biology, socio, borg.
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging renders blood flow to brain zones.
In this study it appears that our brains work differently when we remember facts about our lives than when we re-live experiences, as in the mimesis of shared recollection.
Affect specified.
-w.
feedback loop?
Posted on November 16th, 2004 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, biology, socio, borg.
From an article in the New York Times, an interview with an experimental psychologist at the University of Chicago’s Institute for Mind and Biology:
“My part involves looking at psychological and social factors that might change the genes…”
-Dr. Margaret McClintock, NY Times, Nov 16/04
This is the level of feedback we need to be talking.
Any sufficiently advanced technology becomes indistinguishable from biology.
Today we also have Dr. Kevin Warwick [he of the implanted RFID] warning that computer viruses might well infect people.
-w.
tinfoil hat time
Posted on June 24th, 2004 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, borg.
Infoshop News - Bush to monitor population for mental disorders: “The president’s commission found that ‘despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed’ and recommended comprehensive mental health screening for ‘consumers of all ages,’ including preschool children. “
This kind of thing just seems sketchy to me. Anyone who doesn’t fit in with whatever program the body politic is running gets medicated until they comply?
This is a bad idea.
This report also gives a goal of
mentally ill patients fully into the community by providing “services in the community
Which is in itself a pretty good thing, I think. It’s a lot of the sort of thing that’s emphasized in the environment I work in [when I’m paid to work] and the integration of ill or disabled people into the community is, in general, beneficial to all concerned.
But when there’s a universal screening process in place and the ill are fully integrated into the community, then control becomes invisible and compliance becomes compulsory.
Combine this with the recent okay given to an implanted neurostimulation device and one begins to feel pricklings of paranoia.
-w.
upload my imprint
Posted on October 6th, 2003 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, borg.
WORDS
Talk like a cutting edge space cowboy with the Transhumanist Terminologyglossary!
-w.